Before You Know Kindness

by Chris Bohjalian

  And maybe, just maybe, she wanted to help. Maybe she thought she was frightening the deer away and saving what was left of the snow peas. Now here was an interpretation of history that might get her through this disaster, an explanation of events that might allow her to actually rise from this bed and face her grandmother and her aunt and her cousin. Her mother. Her father. Hadn't she even told Willow last night that she wished there was something she could do about the garden? Certainly she had.

  Oh, she was kidding herself. The truth was there was no design to this disaster, no conscious plan. At least she didn't think there was. It wasn't as if she wanted to shoot anything. Not a deer, not her dad. God, she couldn't possibly have wanted to shoot her dad. Could she? He may not have been a perfect father, but she knew in her heart that he did what he did because he loved animals, and there were worse faults to have in this world.

  She had a vague sense that when her mom had picked the gun up off the ground and hurled it away from her like it was a live hand grenade--the thing had banged against one of Grandmother's apple trees before falling into the grass--she'd feared it was going to go off once again, and send a second bullet into whoever happened to be in its path.

  She told herself now that all she wanted was for her father to survive and to forgive her. Her pillow was sodden with tears, and she wondered if she would ever stop crying.

  SARA HEARD the state trooper's vehicle rumbling up the long rocky driveway before she saw it. She was making sandwiches for the girls and her mother-in-law--Willow and Nan were upstairs now with her niece--and her first instinct was that the car was owned by a friend of Nan's who was coming by to see what she could do. Instead, however, she saw a green and tan cruiser coasting to a stop before the garage, and the trooper they'd met the night before emerging from the vehicle. His name was Ned and he was a sergeant, and she thought his last name might have been Howland, but she wasn't positive. He was about forty, clean-shaven, and his hair was just starting to gray: There were patches of white along his sideburns. She presumed that he was returning John's gun, which he'd confiscated the night before. But she saw that he wasn't reaching into the backseat or venturing around the car to the trunk. He was simply heading up the slate walkway toward the front door, a clipboard and a pad under his arm.

  Patrick had actually fallen back to sleep and his body was lolling right now in his little blue chair on the floor by her feet. She didn't want the doorbell to wake him, and so she raced outside to greet the trooper.

  "Good morning, ma'am," he said, and he tipped his hat. "I hope you don't mind my dropping by. I meant to call first, but a young man rolled his father's pickup in Lisbon. I had to take care of that before coming here, and it threw my day off a bit. The boy's shaken--mostly because his father is furious--but otherwise he's okay. Still, I should have called. My apologies."

  "That's fine."

  "May I come in?"

  She nodded. "Now I should apologize. My manners. I just wasn't thinking. Of course you can come in. I was making sandwiches. We were going to have something to eat and then go to the hospital."

  "I understand your brother-in-law is going to live. That's good news."

  "That's what they tell us," she said, and she opened the screen door and led the trooper into the living room. She motioned toward the couch, but Ned didn't sit down right away.

  "I was wondering, ma'am, are the girls home? And your husband? I know Mrs. McCullough is still at the hospital with Mr. McCullough, and so I'll try and catch up with her a little later. But I would like to speak to Charlotte and Willow again--and to Mr. Seton, if he's here."

  She felt a small shiver of alarm, and she made a conscious effort not to cross her arms before her defensively. She wanted to say, You spoke to everyone last night! but she was able to restrain herself. Still, Howland must have detected her sudden discomfort because he added quickly, "I just want to cross a few t's and dot a few i's, ma'am. Your niece and your daughter were pretty shaken after the accident--your husband was, too, of course--and so I wasn't as thorough as I would have liked."

  She focused in her mind on the fact he had used the word accident and managed to force her lips into a small smile. "I understand," she said. "My husband is actually on his way to the hospital, too. But I can get Willow and Charlotte right now."

  "One at a time, please."

  "One at a time?"

  "That's what I would prefer."

  "May I be with them?"

  "Absolutely."

  She paused, wondering exactly how she should phrase the question that had formed in her mind and caused a quiver of anxiety to lodge in her stomach. Her husband was an attorney: Perhaps he would advise her to tell this Sergeant Howland that everyone would be happy to speak with him when they had a lawyer present. But not until.

  "If you'd like a lawyer with them, I can come back," he said softly, and though she knew he couldn't possibly have read her mind it felt as if he had.

  "Well. Let's see where this questioning is going, okay? We have nothing to hide."

  "I didn't think so."

  "Should I get my daughter? Or would you like to start with my niece?"

  "Whichever, ma'am."

  "Please: Call me Sara."

  He smiled. "I'll try."

  "Thank you."

  "Truth is, I'd be happy to start with you."

  "Me?"

  "Yes, ma'am."

  She felt there was something vaguely antagonistic about his relentless use of the word ma'am, especially after she'd just asked him to call her Sara. It was as if the word was a small sarcastic dig.

  "All right, then. But may we do this in the kitchen? I would love to finish making the family lunch."

  "That would be fine," Howland said. Behind her she heard Nan scuffling down the stairs. Her mother-in-law must have noticed they had company.

  JOHN SETON stood paralyzed in a dim aisle in a natural foods grocery store. He was supposed to be on his way back to the hospital in Hanover to keep his sister company during her vigil in the ICU waiting room, but he had spontaneously detoured here to acquire provisions. He couldn't bear to think of Catherine trying to survive on either food from the vending machines or the hospital cafeteria. He realized now, however, that he honestly didn't know how extreme his sister's diet was or what she really liked to eat. And "like" was the guiding principle in his opinion, because whatever he bought was supposed to provide her comfort. He knew his niece consumed dairy products. Did her mother?

  He looked at his watch and thought of the people he had left back at the house in Sugar Hill. He guessed it would be another few hours before they returned to the hospital, too. Now that Spencer was out of danger, he and his mother had agreed it was best if the whole clan didn't crowd into that bleak waiting room until Spencer was awake. Besides, his mother had observed, it was too nice a day to be inside.

  He wondered how his niece was doing. He felt that he and Charlotte suddenly shared a very special bond: the bond of idiots. The two of them had nearly killed poor Spencer and probably disabled him for life. The difference between them, of course, was that a twelve-year-old girl was afforded the opportunity to sob alone in her bedroom or (last night) in those hideous Naugahyde orange chairs in the waiting room near the hospital's trauma center. A forty-year-old man was not. He had to rally, stifle that penitent urge to curl up in a closet where no one could see him. He had to answer questions, explain his monumental stupidity, make phone calls. This morning he'd spoken, it seemed, to half of Catherine and Spencer's friends, Spencer's sister, and a pair of top managers from FERAL.

  The FERAL calls had actually been worse than the one to Spencer's sister. It was no easy task to explain to vegetarians and animal rights activists that one of their tribal leaders had been shot by his own daughter with a hunting rifle because he'd been mistaken for a deer. While he had been on the phone with the group's director--a stunningly telegenic woman named Dominique with a mane of raven black hair that fell almost to her waist and the greenest
eyes he had ever seen on an animal that didn't use a litter box--he had feared briefly that he would be responsible for a second serious injury to a member of FERAL's senior management, by giving the director a stroke. He'd seen the woman before on The CBS Early Show, and so he knew how skilled she was at preventing anyone else from sliding a word of their own into a conversation, but he was still astounded at the way she proceeded to speak for five solid minutes without seeming to breathe after he had broken the news to her.

  Nevertheless, the call to the deputy director was even more demeaning: Like John he was a lawyer, and he was very sharp. But it was clear on the phone that he was older than John, and he tended to speak with the slow-motion thoughtfulness of a grandfather in a family movie from the 1950s. It was only when the fellow was near the end of each deliberate, carefully considered observation or response to something John had said would he realize how coldly and precisely he had been diminished by this New York City attorney with a slight trace of a southern accent and how little this other lawyer thought of him. John felt not merely like the moron who had nearly killed his brother-in-law: He felt like the public defender from Mayberry, RFD.

  The point that both FERAL officials wanted to make sure John understood wasn't simply that his negligence had almost slain their friend and associate, Spencer McCullough: It was that his loathsome hobby and his shameful inattention (the former were the high-minded words of the director, the latter the construction of her deputy) had the potential to humiliate FERAL. It simply didn't look good for the organization's communications director to have a brother-in-law who hunted. It made them all look like hypocrites. And--worse, in the opinion of the lawyer--it made the group look laughable.

  "But I'm the one who hunts," John had said lamely to the lawyer, when the man had paused to consider how best to twist the knife next. He thought this was a point that should matter.

  "Indeed you are, son. Indeed you are. On occasion, we've all made bad choices with our lives," the lawyer responded. "It's a particular shame, however, when those choices cause pain not simply to ourselves but to the people around us we love. Sometimes, you know, people seem sadly oblivious to the reality that their more irresponsible excursions into the realms of misbehavior reflect badly not merely on themselves, but on their families, too. If the president's brother gets arrested for drug abuse, the president is tarnished as well. If the president's teenage daughter gets stopped for underage drinking, the president himself will be sullied. You, John, have not simply injured your brother-in-law; you may have left a deeply troubling blemish on this organization. Sad but true. You have some education--"

  "I do not have some education," John heard himself saying. "I have a law degree from--"

  "Of course you do, son. Of course you do. That's why I am sure you can understand the way all of us with FERAL may look a tad disingenuous if we do not properly control how this information is disseminated. Have you ever seen the op-ed pages of a newspaper? The section in which there is informed commentary? Well--"

  "Yes, I have seen the op-ed pages of a newspaper. I may live in Vermont--I may practice in Vermont--but I still read more than my horoscope and the comics!"

  "Then I am sure you can imagine what could appear on the op-ed pages this week. Or what Jay Leno and David Letterman might be saying one day soon in their monologues. Vegan animal lover gets plugged by a deer rifle. A deer rifle, John--and fired by his own daughter. Our FERAL family would look deeply troubled. Perhaps even deceitful. At the very least, we would appear to lack the courage of our convictions and--"

  "I'm sorry!" John finally shouted into the telephone, exasperated after having to listen first to Catwoman's rage and now to the sanctimonious diatribe of this lawyer. "I'm sorry my brother-in-law was shot! But lay off this goddamn condescending, holier-than-thou, meat-eaters-are-brainless-barbarians bullshit! I really don't give a rat's ass about your precious FERAL reputation! I care about my brother-in-law and my friend. The truth is, most people view you as a bunch of fanatic sociopaths who try to scare little kids away from hot dogs and want cats to become vegetarians! Okay? That is your reputation!" Then he hung up.

  As annoyed as he was with the FERAL attorney, he still felt considerably more angry at himself. He was sorry! He vowed he'd never pull the trigger on a rifle again. He'd prayed while he was driving to the hospital the night before, while Spencer was in surgery, and then again this morning before he had gotten out of bed. He prayed not simply that Spencer would live but that he wouldn't be crippled when he awoke.

  He remembered how the hardest part last night hadn't been having to look Catherine in the eye. It had been having to gaze at Willow--especially when she was looking back at him. At one point his daughter was in the chair beside Charlotte, who was crying. He and Catherine were leaning aimlessly against the walls, but he watched Willow as she patted Charlotte's bare arm. Her touch, in much the same way that it seemed to calm Patrick, soothed her: She put her head down on Willow's lap, and her crying grew silent.

  He feared that for as long as he lived he would be an imbecile in the eyes of his daughter, and he couldn't imagine how he could possibly regain a semblance of the admiration she must once--a mere day earlier--have had for him. Sara would understand, he guessed, if only because she was a grown-up and whatever delusions she had of his competence had evaporated in all the years they had been married. She knew his strengths (and almost desperately he tried to remind himself that he did have some), and she wouldn't lose sight of them in this one mistake.

  He thought also of his clients, the women and men--invariably guilty but invariably scarred--and their mistakes. The nineteen-year-old heroin addict who lifted cash from the convenience store where she worked and over the course of eight weeks was alleged to have stolen three thousand dollars. The carpenter who tried to make a quick score by bringing a couple blocks of hashish into Vermont from Montreal. The kid from the Northeast Kingdom who took the checkbook of an older neighbor who'd died and thought he could get away with using the checks to catch up on two months of back rent and treat himself to a couple new CDs.

  There were the men and women who drove drunk (too many to count in his head) and the women who were nothing more than unemployable--uneducated or obese or mentally ill--and thus fell into mischief.

  Most of these individuals didn't make one mistake, they made many: Their whole lives were studies in their own bad choices and someone older's unforgivable negligence. And, John realized with both clarity and sadness, they had grown up in broken homes or they had been abused as children or they had been seduced early by drugs . . . and he had no such excuse.

  But then, he reminded himself, he hadn't done what they had. He had committed no crime in either the state where the accident had occurred or the state in which he lived. The state trooper and the officer from Fish and Wildlife were clear on this. Yes, the trooper had confiscated his weapon, but Sara told him that after the two men had inspected the gun by the light in his mother's garage she'd overheard them mumbling that perhaps something they called the extractor was faulty and would turn out to be the real culprit in this disaster.

  Consequently, John told himself that he shouldn't be comparing himself to his clients. If he should be comparing himself to anyone, he decided, it should be to those myriad drivers who lead busy lives (he'd become a father again this year) and thus fail to get snow tires on their vehicles before the first winter blizzard and then careen off the road--though even this thought, in the end, offered precious little comfort.

  He understood that if anyone other than Spencer had been wounded this way, the civil suit facing him now would be enormous. Gargantuan. Quite likely to test the upper limits of even the umbrella atop his homeowner's insurance policy. He and the gun company might even have wound up as codefendants. Consequently, he guessed that in a twisted, self-interested sort of way he should actually take some comfort in the fact this horror had occurred to his brother-in-law and not to an acquaintance or neighbor. Then he most likely would have
been sued.

  After all, though Charlotte had fired the weapon, it was he who had knowingly left a live round in the chamber for eight and a half months. What was he thinking? He envisioned the way the gun must have bounced around in the trunk of the car on the way here only two days ago, and he wondered what would have happened if somehow a first pothole had loosened the safety and a second had caused the gun to discharge. What if one of Willow's friends had decided to break one of the house's cardinal rules and had unlocked the cabinet in the guest bedroom in which the rifle was stored? Under normal circumstances this wouldn't have been cataclysmic because he kept his ammunition in a separate lockbox in his armoire. But what if some child--that rowdy kid in Willow's class who wound up playing at their home once in a while because he lived only two houses away, Gregg, for instance--had gotten a hold of the gun with the live round inside it? Willow had nicknamed the kid Little Hoodlum, and the boy took pride in the moniker.